Step 1, Create the UserPermission model.
script/generate model UserPermission controller:string action:string id_of_object:integer t.integer person_id:integer
You may or may not want to delete the t.timestamps out of the migration that was created for you in db/migrate (should be your newest migration, eg. 20100401043834_create_user_permissions.rb) as I don't feel timestamps are necessary for this type of data.
In your User model add:
has_many :user_permission
In your UserPermission model add:
belongs_to :person
validates_presence_of :controller
validates_presence_of :action
validates_presence_of :id_of_object
validates_presence_of :person_id
Step 2, Implement your before_filter method
Note you must already have your own method to access the current user to complete this step.
In this code example we access our current user with the @user variable (which in my code this is defined in a before_filter that executes on every page)
In app/controllers/application_controller.rb, write the following. I wrote mine under private.
def require_permission
p = = @user.user_permission.first(:conditions => "controller = '%s' and (action = '%s' OR action = '*')" % [params[:controller], params[:action]])
if params[:id] and p
unless p.id_of_object == params[:id].to_i or p.id_of_object == 0
p = false
end
end
unless p
flash[:notice] = "Permission Denied"
redirect_to :controller => 'people'
end
end
Step 3, Implement
Add a before_filter :require_permission anywhere where you want this to execute.
Now lets create some permissions, I do this in my app console with the following code but you may create your own view from here to do this.
script/console production in your app directory to access console for your production environment (remove production for development environment)
Then type this:
p = @user.user_permission.new(:controller => 'posts', :action => '*', :id_of_object => 0); p.save
This will give you access to all objects and all actions for posts. * is a wildcard for :action and 0 is a wildcard for :id_of_objects, you can set this to something specific like :action => 'new' or set the :id_of_object to a specific number.
Anyways hope this helps, if any questions feel free to ask!
